Forget Botox. Anti-Aging Pills May Be Next.

Published: September 21, 2003

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IF companies seem to want to distance themselves from the quest for long life, there is a reason. For centuries, the search for the Fountain of Youth has been the province of hucksters and people obsessed with their own mortality. Many companies already sell nutritional supplements, which are barely regulated, claiming effectiveness in slowing aging or its effects.

''I think there are some people that are idealistic, some people that are mercenary, some people that are quacks and some people that are legitimate scientists,'' said George Roth, a researcher who retired from the National Institute of Aging and is now chief executive of GeroTech.

Last year, 51 specialists in the area of aging published a statement in Scientific American magazine cautioning consumers that while certain supplements and hormones may have positive or negative effects on health, none have been demonstrated to influence the process of aging.

S. Jay Olshansky, a professor of public health at the University of Illinois at Chicago and lead author of the statement, said in an interview that scientists do not even know how to measure aging, so ''it is not possible to document that it has been slowed, stopped or reversed.''

Still, citing the daunting prospects of getting F.D.A. approval, some companies like GeroTech and LifeGen say they are aiming for nutritional supplements, which can reach the market faster than drugs. Juvenon is already selling its Juvenon Energy Formula; a co-founder of the company is Bruce N. Ames, a professor of molecular biology at the University of California at Berkeley.

Another route to market may be pet foods. LifeGen says it has a contract to do research for a big pet food company, which it would not name.

The historical taint of quackery in life extension and the long time frames to bring an anti-aging drug to market have scared off many potential investors and big pharmaceutical companies. As a result, some companies aiming to expand the human life span have met early deaths or are surviving on money-restricted diets.

GeroTech has no phone listing and no headquarters other than its lawyer's office in Baltimore. LifeGen, started by two University of Wisconsin scientists, once relied for business advice on two students in the university's business school.

''Investors are very conservative people, and when you start talking to them about doing that,'' extending life span, ''they start thinking about snake oil,'' said Stephen R. Spindler, a professor of biochemistry at the University of California at Riverside, who is also chief technology officer of BioMarker Pharmaceuticals, which develops anti-aging drugs.

Indeed, BioMarker's own founder, chairman and main financial backer is controversial. He is Saul Kent, a founder of the Life Extension Foundation, which sells nutritional supplements and is based in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. Mr. Kent, who has long fought F.D.A. regulation of such supplements, was indicted in 1991, accused of importing unapproved pharmaceuticals, but the charges were eventually dropped. He also made news in the late 1980's when he had his deceased mother's head cut off to be preserved for possible revival.

Other companies have received money from investors with less colorful backgrounds. Elixir, for example, has raised $37 million from blue-chip venture capitalists. Its star power derives from its two founding scientists, Leonard Guarente of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Cynthia Kenyon of the University of California at San Francisco. They were among the first to show that changing the activity of a single gene could extend life span.

In January, Elixir merged with Centagenetix, a company that studies the genes of people who have lived to be 100. Such centenarians tend to cluster in families, another sign that genetic factors are involved in longevity. Elixir said it hopes to begin a clinical trial of its first drug within two years.

Alteon, a publicly traded company in Ramsey, N.J., is tackling an aspect of aging with a drug that is in clinical trials. As people age, the company says, glucose links proteins in the body's tissues, making the tissues stiffer, like cooked meat. That contributes to ailments like heart failure, high blood pressure, kidney disease and skin aging, the company says.

Alteon's drug breaks up these advanced glycation end products, or A.G.E.'s, as the glucose-protein links are called. (Hence Alteon calls itself the ''anti-A.G.E.ing company.'') In July, the company announced that, in a clinical trial, its drug did not reduce high blood pressure significantly more than a placebo, although the company said the drug showed some signs of working. The company's stock plunged to less than $2 from about $7 and now trades at $2.05.

The old man of the anti-aging field is Geron, whose name comes from the Greek for old man. It was started in 1990 by Dr. Michael D. West, a cell biologist who dropped out of medical school to pursue a theory of why cells age. Chromosomes have tips called telomeres that shrink a little each time the cell divides. When the telomeres run out, like a fuse burning down to its end, the cell enters senescence. Geron established that an enzyme called telomerase could rebuild the telomeres, making cells potentially immortal, like a molecular fountain of youth.